Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!” he said. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred

That’s from The Charge of the Light Brigade, a reminder for those of you with a classical education. That was based on an event during the Crimean War. So what was that all about?

The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which Russia lost to an alliance of France, the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. The immediate cause of the war involved the rights of Christian minorities in Palestine, which was part of the Ottoman Empire. The French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics, and Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the expansion of the Russian Empire in the preceding Russo-Turkish Wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe. It has widely been noted that the causes, in one case involving an argument over a key, had never revealed a “greater confusion of purpose” but led to a war that stood out for its “notoriously incompetent international butchery”.

History does seem to repeat but in such insane sorts of ways. You do have to wonder about this: Joe Biden Tells US Troops in Poland They’re Going to Ukraine (Video) …Update: White House Corrects Biden.

And now who is going to correct the White House?